Hero's Quest: A New Kind of Sierra Adventure
By Gundd Singh Khalsa Hero's Quest Produce With the release of Hero's Quest I — So You Want to he a Hero. Sierra has created a new kind of animated adventure game that brings together fantasy role-playing and tradition al adventure games The designers of Hero's Quest, Lori and Corey Cole, have been involved in fantasy role-playing games for almost 15 years, and in designing Hero's Quest, Lori tried to combine the best elements of traditional "Dungeons and Dragons" paper role-playing games with those of her favorite com puter games. Why create a new kind of adventuregame? Well . . . let's explore some of the differences between role-playing games and Sierra's traditional adventure games. What do we love about traditional adventure games? Exploring a new world, using our wits to survive and solve puzzles, meeting new and interesting characters, and of course a rich story line full of perils and rewards. What do traditional adventure games lack? Well . . . your character doesn't learn and grow throughout the game. In real life we grow, learn and (hopefully) increase our wisdom, strength, compassion, and skills. Also a role-playing game usually allows you to explore together with a party of fellow adventurers, while in an adventure game you go it alone. There are some frustrations involved in playing computer role-playing games as well : your charac ter often develops so slowly in skills and strength that it's easy to die a thousand deaths before you ever get strong enough to reach the deeper levels of the game. There are usually many "empty" areas of the story . . . places where you can walk around and never see another being or have anything to do. There's usually lots of combat in which you must fight monsters over, and over, and over again and this can get tedious. With Hero's Quest the Cole's tried to create a new kind of game that has all the fun of both an adventure game AND a role-playing game. To do so, the best of both genres has been combined into a single game. Hero's Quest is a beginning role-playing game for those of us who love tradi tional adventure games. As role-playing games go. it's rather small and you still only get to play one character rather than a whole party of characters, but the realism of the game world is wonderfully rich and detailed. Your character develops, grows. Icams, and improves his or her skills as the adventure progresses. One of the very best things about Hero's Quest is that you can play the game over and over and have a completely different experience by choosing a dif ferent character every time you play! Every time you play the game it's different . . . different solutions to the puzzles and different characters and situations. Not only that, but the character you play in Hero's Quest can be saved at the end of the game and will continue to develop and grow in future games of the series! Because Hero's Quest gives you a lot of opportunities to interact and communicate with all the characters in the game, the Coles developed a new system of "Quick Keys" to make typing and communication easier. Now, instead of having to type. "Ask about magic" you need only hit CtrlA (the 'Control key' and the 'A' key) andthen type "magic". Ctrl-A is a shortcut for "Ask about . . .", Ctrl-L is "Look at . . .". Ctrl-C is "Cast the magic spell . . .", etc. This saves a bunch of typing! Hero's Quest brings together the widely varying skills of many creative people. As the game evolved from a development standpoint, every member of the Hero's Quest team contributed something unique to the game. Programmer Bob Fischbach contributed his great talent for bad puns and programming wonderful animation. Artist Kcnn Nishiuye bought his background in wildlife and fantasy art, and his skill with realistic character animation. Artist Jerry Moore contributed his wild and creative imagination and his penchant for great visual gags. Programmer Larry Scott exer cised his skill in complicated combat logic, and Programmer Corey Cole developed the exquisitely balanced player skill and statistics system upon which the game is founded. Perhaps best of all. Hero's Quest has a wonderful and sly sense of humor full of witty references to everything from ancient folk legends to Star Trek, Monty Python and Firesign Theatre comedy routines. What??? You haven't played Hero's Quest yelVAl You want to know what it's all about? Okay . . . here goes . . . In Hero's Quest, you start with a character named by YOU . . . either a Fighter or a Magician or a Thief. Each type of charac ter has certain abilities and attributes. Abilities arc things like: Weapon Use, Lock Picking, Magic, Climbing, Throwing, etc. Attributes are things like: Strength, Agility. Intelligence, etc. You also have some "extra" points that you can distribute to these skills and abilities to customize your character. Now, your hero enters the town of Spiel burg, ("Gametown" in German of course!) . . . you know . . . it's right across the river from Lucasville. (Grin.) You meet and interact with the townsfolk and gradually learn of the problems folks in the valley have been experiencing lately. You can eat, rest, and buy supplies in town, and then (be brave!) you must leave the town and explore the sur rounding forest. There are lots of interest ing locations and folk in the forest, some friendly and some quite dangerous. When you meet monsters you may either fight or run from them. You don't have to fight if you don't want to. As you meet the many denizens of the forest and ask them about their experiences, you will begin to get a pretty clear picture of what needs doing in these realms, and (being a hero) you set about doing it! ( jo »you u«*n! to be o> He«o 1 r- ^ But you soon leam that there is much more to being a hero than you had original ly suspected! You see ... at the beginning of the game . . . your character just isn't GOOD enough to save the valley. Fortunately, there are a number of quests in which you can practice your heroic skills and get to be enough of a hotshot to finally end the evil curse that has been cast upon the valley. Nice thing is, even if you don't know what to do next at any particular time in the game, you can always earn some money, (useful to buy potions, magic scrolls, supplies, armor, etc.) or improve your combat skill, magic skills, or sneakiness quotient. Hero's Quest has a full day/night cycle within the game and you will play through many days and nights until you become a full-fledged hero. And once you're done, you can play it over again as a different kindof hero, because for each type of character there are different solutions and different areas of the game that ONLY that type of character can see! Hero's Quest is planned as a four game series which will follow your character as he or she grows from a wet-behind-the-ears Famous Adventurers' Correspondence School graduate, to a true Hero . . . and beyond! We're already story-boarding Hero's Quest II — Trial by Fire, which will take your Hero into the exciting and mysterious world of the Arabian Nights ... a land of golden sands, turquoise skies, wondrous magic and fantastic adventure, where you can continue with your characters from the first game, or start new characters from scratch. The world needs heroes these days . . . see you in Spielberg! Category:Articles Category:Hero's Quest